No Textbooks in Elementary School; All of FCPS, or Just Schools Near Me?
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Anonymous
These look like great resources, and that's an interesting thread from 2018 of parents saying "I use this with my elem/middle-schooler because the materials MCPS has suck" It's so sad to me that some of the nation's wealthiest school districts can't provide quality materials to their students, leaving parents to spend time and money filling in the gaps, which, of course, widens the achievement gap. |
Anonymous
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Curious. What subjects /grades are you talking about that have no textbooks?
I was a first grade teacher and, except for reading and math, the textbooks were terrible for Science and Social Studies. I much preferred bringing in outside materials for those subjects. And, except for the readers, I preferred workbooks for phonics, reading skills, and math. |
Anonymous
Because private school teachers are rarely certified and need to rely on textbooks |
Anonymous
They are required to be certified at his school. |
Anonymous
Yeah I taught in VA and it kind of killed my desire to ever teach full time again. I came from a state where I worked as a para, sub, and student teacher in schools where teachers were provided with curriculum for every subject. They had pacing guides but also teacher edition books to go with the guide. Students had textbooks and workbooks. I constantly had VA admin questioning why I wanted to teach if I liked having a set curriculum to follow or if I believed in practices they considered inappropriate like spelling tests, dictation, or reading aloud as a class. I’m sure they didn’t mean to make me feel awful and I think they were probably just trained to believe those things are outdated, despite many schools still using those resources and methods. I’m currently subbing between corporate jobs and the school district I’m in does Friday spelling tests and dictation, and they have textbooks and workbooks. They do supplement with TPT and Super Teacher Worksheets, but they are allowed to and aren’t expected to spend hours after school creating and copying resources for their students. It seems like they have a better work life balance. I still don’t think I’d ever the to teach full time again though. Observations gave me awful anxiety. I felt like I was always being ripped apart for not doing things the way they wanted them done in VA but I hadn’t seen things done that way before, even while working as a para in veteran teacher classrooms outside VA. I think collaborative learning can be great, but sometimes students working quietly as a class or independently isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When you make everything a game they seem to start to find those activities to be boring rather than engaging. A lot of kids can’t focus when everything is collaborative or a game bc many kids become very distracting during such activities. Not every student can handle everything being a collaborative activity or a game. But I’m sure a lot of people think I sound awful and outdated anyway and are glad I’m not teaching. I’m only subbing and following the directions left to me and they often involve things like reading a story from class anthologies and then answering comprehension questions. I remember doing that stuff as a kid and I can’t say it ever hurt me to be expected to stay in my seat and work independently. Centers can be great, but I don’t think the whole school day should be moving from center to center. You know not every student stays on task and the teacher cannot devote every second to keeping those few kids on tasks when they are only one person and are expected to meet 1:1 or in small groups during centers. I’m not sure why older teachers would want to help new ones burn out, but I’ve seen it. When new teachers are provided with a curriculum and resources to follow it helps a lot with work life balance. There is still planning and supplementing to do, but nowhere near as much as when a teacher is just given a pacing guide and then needs to create their own lessons and resources for everything on that guide. It’s strange to me that some people prefer that, but to each their own. |
Anonymous
Lol and they encourage you to create the mini lesson on slides. All they seemed to give teachers were the standards in the order they wanted them taught. Occasionally they’d suggest a resource but then you had to track it down and usually another teacher had it checked out of the school library or another school had it!! Like thanks for suggesting I use a specific lesson from a specific book next week, but I probably won’t find it since it’s checked out by another teacher at a completely different school towns away. Thanks for the idea though! Where I am now, if a school wants a teacher using Fundations or a HMH book, that teacher is given their very own copy to keep in their room. If you can’t find it it’s your own fault. Keep it somewhere safe and you’ll always have access. No need to spend hours after school waiting for a free copier to run off a billion copies of anything. |
Anonymous
I have two kids in private school. Both of their teachers were former FCPS teachers. My oldest is at FCPS. I have not noticed a difference in qualifications or level of education (at either schools). |
Anonymous
Same situation but the expectations (academically and behaviorally) are much higher. |
Anonymous
| Not every teacher hates textbooks https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/pel629/pro_tip_its_ok_to_use_a_textbook_especially_if/ |
Anonymous
But textbooks are so antiquated! Isn't it much more modern to have professional who are paid $70,000+/year to spend hours every week in front of a photocopier? |
Anonymous
So green! |
Anonymous
FCPS teacher here. I would love to have textbooks to use as a resource. |
Anonymous
| My elementary kids don’t know what a text book is?!! We are special in FCPS! |
Anonymous
| Essentially the FCPS teachers are creating their own versions of textbooks every year by getting worksheets off of TPT and Super Teacher Worksheets and other homeschool websites. They have to combine this random assortment into a textbook/workbook trying to follow a pacing guide. None of this is complete nor sequential. They are jumping from standard to standard. There are many, many gaps. They are all recreating materials and some of it is not great. It’s not vetted by others. It’s fraught with errors and spelling mistakes (it’s material lifted from the internet after all and not edited, nor tested). The learning is not sequential as only a specific strand is taught and not the surrounding material. No one even knows what gap is missing because the material is so poorly tied together and the worksheets did not build in a smooth, logical fashion. It’s very disappointing. |
Anonymous
I used to be heavily involved with both VAIS and AIMS; I’ve never seen a VA, MD or DC private that required teachers to be certified. |